Should Your Business Adopt Enterprise DevOps? Explore The Practices And Implementation

In today’s business world, companies need to be able to change their practices and processes quickly to meet the changing expectations of their end users. This is where DevOps services come into play. Businesses should invest in DevOps-enabling technologies, practices, and methodologies.

DevOps allows companies to develop projects more efficiently. It helps businesses close the gap between requirements and implementation and get solutions out faster. 

The History Of DevOps

The history of DevOps is the story of two people who had no idea that would change how we think about software development. In 2008, Andrew Clay and Pattrick Debois were concerned about the drawbacks of Agile and wanted to come up with something better. 

It slowly began to spread and become quite a buzzword. DevOps is best because it is more than just an attempt at efficiency; it is a step toward cultural change. They railed against the standard software development model, which called for those who write code to be organizationally and functionally apart from those who deploy and support that code.

For a long time, developers and IT/ Ops professionals were at odds with each other. They had different goals, were judged by various metrics, and often worked in different physical locations. This led to teams that only cared about their work, long hours, and unhappy customers. However, it was soon clear that there had to be a better way to do things. 

DevOps was a movement that few people knew about a few years ago. But soon, big names in the tech industry started to take notice. And DevOps became more mainstream. DevOps is about improving the way software is made by bringing together tools and processes that help engineers work better. 

Today it is more crucial to release new software quickly and to provide continuous, reliable service. In addition, consumer’s rising expectations and increasing data availability have made DevOps necessary for many companies. The question lies in whether or not to implement DevOps but when. 

Related Read: Top DevOps Trends And Statistics You Need To Know In 2023

Challenges Of DevOps For A Business 

You have probably understood by now that a DevOps transformation is something you can only do after a while. It requires a complete rethink of business processes and infrastructure and revising the company’s collaboration culture.

Luckily, it’s worth the effort, as there are proven ways to overcome each bottleneck. Let’s look at some typical challenges you might encounter when implementing enterprise DevOps. 

Related Read: Do I Need DevOps As A Service For My Startup?

Fig. 1. Challenges Of DevOps

🔸Legacy Systems

Outdated infrastructure can put a major damper on adopting the DevOps approach. It should be improved with newer technology or replaced with new systems to be efficient. 

One way to achieve faster deployment and delivery of innovative products is to use a modern architecture like microservices.

🔸Too Many Changes

When teams move to DevOps, getting caught up in all the shining tools and processes can be easy. But it’s important to remember that too many changes add extra complexity to an established workflow. Also, some stakeholders need help grasping new concepts and their possible effect on the company’s revenue and budget. 

To solve that issue, it’s important to remember that DevOps adoption is a long-term process that requires a step-by-step roadmap with clear guidelines. Instead, try incorporating gradual changes and let every participant get familiar with the concept.

🔸Too Many Tools

With so many tools serving different purposes, it can take time to determine which ones to use. A major obstacle is getting them to work collaboratively, continuously, and efficiently. 

The best practice can ensure that every employee can follow new processes or use new tools. For that, it is important to train processes that embrace every employee. The key is to create an organizational structure of devices, systems, and technologies that the team will adopt. 

🔸Diversity Of Metrics

When companies transition from a traditional development approach to DevOps, they may struggle with collecting basic information about their processes. Some organizations collect vast data but need to identify valuable metrics to take action on. 

To address this issue, collect only relevant metrics that value your teams and agree on particular actions to improve those metrics. 

Implementing An Automation Testing Strategy

Your organization understands that automated tests are key for enterprise DevOps practices like CI/CD. But what’s slowing down test automation? It’s not just about outlining the test strategy, it’s about providing a sample implementation of that strategy to guide the teams.

A clear understanding of the test strategy is critical for adopting test automation across the organization. This will shorten the feedback loops and get your products out the door quicker!

Best Practices Of Enterprise DevOps Implementation

Though companies face difficulties, they should focus on how to succeed with DevOps implementation. Let’s look at the components that create an ideal environment for this initiative,

Fig. 2. Best Practices Of Enterprise DevOps Implementation

🔸Implement Agile

DevOps is built upon the foundation of Agile principles, emphasizing collaboration, frequent deployments, and customer needs. By sharing many of the same values, agile and DevOps create a synergy that makes it easier for organizations to embrace changes. 

Thus, adopting an Agile mindset is necessary first and then assuming the basics of DevOps. With that DevOps practice, it will be easier to experiment with the cultural and operational changes within the development and then extend them to the ops staff. 

Related Read: Step-by-Step Process Of Agile Scrum Methodology

🔸Adopt CI/CD

DevOps teams need to maintain a central code repository, control the source code, use common versioning systems, and “shift left” by bringing testing as early as possible, ingesting automation into the build and test process, including a unit test in the automated build process, trigger each builds each after every software component commit, and submit instant feedback on the quality of produced deliverables. 

🔸Focus On Observability

A continuous monitoring process can be tricky as companies move from monolithic applications to microservices-based solutions. DevOps solutions can help you streamline this process and make it more efficient. 

To ensure that the project is effective, you should collect data from all sources that pertain to its performance. This data can come from metrics, logs, and traces associated with the software. Doing this can create a base for diagnostics and identify unknown causes, symptoms, or lags. 

🔸Implement Automation

Continuous integration and delivery help developers to automatically merge code into the main repository regularly rather than check it manually. This process can be automated with CI/CD, from batching comments in a specified window to frequently committing changes.

In addition, with CI/CD, automated testing is an important part of successful DevOps practices. Computerized tests can include end-to-end, unit, integration, and performance tests. 

Related Read: How To Ensure Quality With Automation

🔸Monitor DevOps Pipeline And Application

Monitoring the DevOps pipeline is essential; a failed test doesn’t cause delays. Automation enhances the speed of development, but if there is a failure in an automated process and nobody knows about it, you are better off doing the work manually.

Similarly, it’s important to monitor production applications to identify failures or performance deficiencies before you hear about them from your customers. 

🔸Continuous Feedback

The continuous feedback loop is essential for keeping team members informed and up-to-date on all information they need to do their jobs. From a development point of view, this indicates that the team is immediately alerted to any pipeline failures and that clear code test results are made available to developers as quickly as possible.

The team is aware of production failures, performance issues, or reported bugs from a product perspective. 

🔸Shift In Culture

For DevOps to be successful, collaboration, transparency, trust, and empathy must already be established within the organization. If your organization already has these qualities, it should be relatively easy for teams to adopt DevOps practices. However, if these qualities still need to be present, some effort will be required to develop them.

The most common organizational structures have separate areas of ownership and responsibility, and there is minimal cross-team communication. For DevOps to succeed, cross-team collaboration must eliminate these barriers. 

Why Do People Fail In Enterprise DevOps Implementation?

🔸Failure To Employee Correct Tools

Many tools are available to help with DevOps solutions, three of which are Docker, Kubernetes, and Git. To utilize these tools, it is important to understand why they are useful and how to use them effectively. In addition, because these tools are cloud-based, they can be especially helpful with internal communication, safety, and automating processes.

🔸Failure To Apply Modifications To The Habitual Everyday Processes

Keeping your staff in the loop is important regardless of company changes. They should be aware of any new devices or technologies and be properly trained to use them. Otherwise, any changes will fail.

It’s critical to understand and communicate customer value. Some DevOps implementation require cultural transformations, so it’s important to explain the changes to your staff and get them on board. Demonstrate the upcoming modifications’ value and ensure everyone is prepared for the difference.

🔸Reliance On Manually Controlled Processes

In today’s business world, automation is key, and organizations should not be scared to relinquish control to technology. Of course, this operation is wrong in many ways, but companies can benefit by instilling a deep trust in the instruments they have added to their processes. In addition, automation decreases costs and terms and is less prone to mistakes.

🔸Micromanagement

Today, micromanagement is a huge issue for those who practice DevOps. It’s not a good idea for management to scrutinize every little detail closely because employees feel suffocated and lose all motivation for creativity. 

DevOps is all about freedom and independence. Developers should be able to decide what works best for various projects. They should be able to try out different tools and develop their original ways of solving problems. Autonomy matters today.